


a little joy tomorrow

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blow Jobs, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-26
Updated: 2010-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-13 09:27:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark isn't sure what makes him look away from the screen. Canon-divergent for the prompt: at some point Mark actually looks up from his endless coding and Sean-worship and realises that Eduardo is unhappy and tries to do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little joy tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt at [mark_eduardo](http://community.livejournal.com/mark_eduardo/24101.html?thread=258085#t258085) on LJ: _Facebook is created and everything happens the same way except that Eduardo doesn't get pushed out. At some point Mark actually looks up from his endless coding and Sean-worship and realises that Eduardo is unhappy and tries to do something about it._

Mark is wired-in. He's wired-in and he can't hear anything but his own heartbeat, so he's not really sure what makes him glance away from the screen. The house looks like a frat party gone badly wrong (or right, he guesses, but that's not something he has much experience with). There's beer and pizza and pretty girls who are pretty stoned. And Sean is leaning over Eduardo.

Sean is leaning over Eduardo, really close, tight against the wall. Mark would look away but he doesn't, because even he knows that Eduardo hates Sean. So it's a little weird that Eduardo would let him get so close. Sean has his arm braced against the wall, over Eduardo's shoulder. He's talking, but of course Mark can't hear them.

Eduardo meets Mark's eyes, all of a sudden, across the room. He watches, for a moment, long enough that Sean looks over too. Sean says something. And then Eduardo turns his head away, turns away from Mark, and from Sean - presses his cheek against the wall, looking away from everyone. And Mark stands up, untangling himself from his headphones and the power cables.

He walks over to the two of them. Mark says, "Maybe you should go," and Eduardo steps away. _Eduardo_ steps- Mark grabs his arm. "Sean," he says, "Sean, I think maybe you should go."

"Mark-," Sean says, his eyebrows raised.

"Look, go and stay with your girlfriend, or wherever it is you stay when you're not here. But I think maybe you should go and we can talk in the morning."

"What the hell, Mark? I've been here _with you_ the whole time and now you're- What?"

"I don't know. I have no idea what you said and it’s probable that I don't want to but whatever it was seemed to be making Eduardo unhappy so maybe we should just talk about the next meeting tomorrow."

"Eduardo's always unhappy," Sean says.

Mark opens his mouth with an instinctive denial. Eduardo is rarely unhappy, unless he has just spoken to his father. Eduardo is much more easily pleased than Mark. Eduardo can be made happy by things which have no such effect on Mark's mood - Mark turning up on time, or remembering to bring him a beer from the fridge. It's easy to make Eduardo smile, if you decide to do that. But it does occur to Mark that he hasn't seen Eduardo smile recently. Eduardo is always unhappy, for a given value of always that started round about when Mark flew out to California.

Mark steps between Eduardo and Sean. Eduardo still hasn't said anything. Mark is no sort of barrier, but it makes him feel better now that Sean isn't so close to Eduardo. Mark raises his voice, "Anyone not currently employed by Facebook or, I guess, currently involved in some kind of a long term relationship with someone employed by Facebook, probably should find somewhere else to sleep tomorrow night. We have work to do this week." He looks at Sean. "Seriously, I think you should go."

"You'd rather save face with your buddy than send this company to the-."

"I don't know," Mark says. He really doesn't. He's never thought about it that way. "But I don't believe that you're so integral to our future plans that I can't risk the very small possibility that you're going to take this personally. Find somewhere else to sleep tonight. I will talk to you tomorrow."

Mark's hand is still wrapped around Eduardo's elbow. He tugs, experimentally, to see whether this might work. "Come with me."

Eduardo follows him up to the bedroom Mark is currently calling his own.

Mark sits on the bed. Eduardo leans against the edge of the table and asks, "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"Mark."

"We really do need to talk about investment. I need you to listen to me this time. Advertising will kill us - we're not at the place yet. We’re going to get there, I think, but at this stage…"

"Mark." He still looks unhappy.

"Eduardo. Can you please listen to me and trust that in this one thing, I know better than you."

Eduardo raises his eyebrows. "Just in this one thing, Mark?"

"There are other things too but right now that's the most important."

"So why am I here?"

Because I need you here, Mark thinks, but he's said that before - Eduardo already knows that answer. Mark considers this. Sometimes people don't hear everything he says. He goes too fast and he's onto the next thing before they've processed the first. Erica maintained once that he had never told her that he loved her, when he had told her weeks before. She hadn't heard him, she said. He doesn't know if that's true - she had definitely heard the second part of the sentence - that was why they didn't talk for three days. Eduardo and Mark don't normally have these problems.

Eduardo is looking at him. "Mark. That was the point where you were supposed to say 'I can't do this without you.' In case you missed it."

Mark appreciates the heads-up, because he does miss those things, but he had caught that one. "I _can_ do this without you," he says. "Now. Not before but now- can you please stop reacting before I've finished talking? I can do this without you but I don't want to. I don't want to have this and not have you, I don't want to do this with anyone else but you, so can you please help me out?"

Eduardo shrugs, still standing, looking down at Mark. "You sent Sean away."

"Yes."

"I don't know why you did that."

"You've been wanting me to do that for months."

"Yeah. So I don't know why you did it."

Mark reaches out, thinking that maybe it was easier when they weren't talking. Eduardo's hand is nearest, and Mark pulls on it, dragging Eduardo towards him. Eduardo's eyes widen. "Come here," Mark says. "What do you want?"

Eduardo’s gaze flicks from Mark's eyes to his mouth and back again.

"That was easy." Mark pulls him closer, so he's standing between Mark's legs. Mark slides off the bed. Eduardo is wearing nicely-pressed slacks which Mark cannot quite taste him through. He can feel the heat, and Eduardo hardening under his mouth. But Mark is essentially an impatient person and he flicks the buttons open, leaving just a thin layer of cotton between his mouth and Eduardo's dick.

Eduardo makes high, gasping noises that Mark only dimly recognises as belonging to him. His fingers tug on Mark's shirt-collar. Mark cannot quite decipher this code until it occurs to him that Eduardo is trying to keep himself from pressing against Mark's neck, against the back of his head. Mark isn't sure if Eduardo's courtesy should be quite such a turn-on, but it is.

Mark pulls his mouth away and Eduardo glares at him through half-lidded eyes. "Mark, are you-?"

"Bed," he says. "You're fucking up my angles, sit on the bed."

Eduardo turns them both around, so Eduardo is on the edge of the bed and Mark is kneeling between his legs. It means he can push Eduardo back a little, and get himself more range of movement. He has room to pull off Eduardo and listen to that desperate noise before swallowing him down again. He can wrap his hands around Eduardo's thighs and feel the muscles tremble.

Eduardo pushes Mark away before he can swallow, spilling hot over Mark's shirt and his own chest. Mark uses his shirt to clean up the mess, throwing it across the room. He expects Eduardo to protest the untidiness - the fact that they will only have to pick the clothes up in the morning and that it will be an even more unpleasant task then. Mark is focussed on the now: Eduardo’s sluggish movements and a smile that still won’t break across his face. Mark strips out of his jeans and gets onto the bed. He lies down and looks at the ceiling.

Mark hears Eduardo shuffling off the bed and rustling with something on the floor. “Wardo?”

“Yeah?”

“Come to bed.”

Eduardo drops something – clothes maybe, it’s a dull noise. He says, “You-,” and stops. Mark can’t think what’s supposed to belong in the space at the end of that question.

Eduardo climbs back into the bed, underneath the blankets. Mark waits – three hundred and sixty seconds – and decides that he has been patient enough. He rolls towards Eduardo, towards the open curve of his chest. Counts again – four hundred and ninety two seconds – and Eduardo places his hand on Mark’s waist. “Are you cold?” Eduardo asks.

“I’m always cold,” Mark says. For a value of always that started when he flew out to California and Eduardo stayed behind.

Eduardo spreads out his fingers, wide open over Mark’s skin.

Mark sleeps.

 

*

He dreams of silences. Wired-in and staring at Eduardo, which doesn’t make sense because he gets wired-in so he won’t be distracted. Eduardo is distracting. Mark doesn’t know what Eduardo looks like when Mark is coding, because Mark is never looking at him then. He only looks at the screen, he only knows what Eduardo _feels like_ when Mark is coding, the tentative touch on his shoulder. But Mark dreams of silence, and Eduardo’s head flung back, into the rain, into the high soundless noise of his orgasm, into a scream.

“What do you _want_?” Mark asks, though he makes no sound.

Eduardo’s lips bend into a frown around Mark’s name, silently.

 

*

He goes to get his laptop when he wakes up. There are still pizza boxes and beer bottles out there, but fewer stoned people. When he gets back to the bedroom, Eduardo is just stirring. Mark presses his thumb into the delicate, veined skin of Eduardo’s wrist. _What_? he wants to ask. What is it, if it’s not success, or money, or to prove your father wrong. Mark knows why he wants Eduardo there but he doesn’t know why Eduardo chooses to stay.

Eduardo says, "Mark," – the answer before the question. He smiles, slowly. As though he’s not all the way awake yet.

“Yes,” Mark says.

That seems to wake Eduardo up a little more. His eyes open all the way and fix on Mark’s, over the laptop screen. He says, “I should-.”

“It’s okay. It’s still early.”

“It’s a mess out there and we need to-.”

“Someone will deal with it. Someone always does.”

“Someone is usually me,” Eduardo points out.

“Yes,” Mark says, “but today it can be somebody else.”

“And you said you would call Sean about a meeting.”

“I said I would call Sean tomorrow. I have all day.”

Eduardo sighs, but he’s grinning through it. He stretches on the bed, long limbs uncurling. “So what do you want to do? Did you need to finish something?” He nods at the computer, still open on Mark’s knee.

Eduardo is one of very few people who can both regularly and accurately be described as happy to see Mark. That’s Mark specifically, not just someone who can fix the bug that makes that box move ten pixels sideways, or who can find Sean, or who can explain why the network overloaded last night. Eduardo smiles at Mark because Mark is looking at him.

Mark says, “I have things to finish, yes. But I have some time. Would you like to help me fill it?”

Eduardo laughs – at the innuendo, or in surprise. He reaches up to wrap his hands around Mark’s shoulders, to pull him down into a kiss. His mouth is curved up as it hits Mark’s, warm with something he does not explain. Maybe he’s just happy.


End file.
